Happy Cinco de Mayo

Today is Cinco de Mayo...a day when we give thanks to the Mexicans for tequila and burritos. Of course I am kidding, I have no idea why we celebrate Cinco de Mayo unless I Google it and then I could tell you about the battle between the French and the Mexicans. I don't care to do that since this is not a post about history. Actually, I just need a reason to write today. Why do I need a reason to write today? Mostly because I wanted to follow up on my last post, I said I was going to write more and then we changed cable providers. What happened after that was neither of my notebooks would connect to the internet and I only had my kindle fire which is great for reading and not so great for writing. My husband and I went over the idea of fixing the old notebooks so we could use them and we probably will eventually, but I wanted an iPad. Finally, yesterday for my birthday which is next month I got my iPad. Guess I don't have an excuse not to write. I have actually been looking forward to putting more into my writing. For most of my life I have wanted to write and make money writing. For a variety of reasons I have stifled my creativity and not made use of my talents. As I mentioned, next month is my birthday. It is my 40th birthday an I have decided that it is now or never. I either need to get some good ideas written or I need to give up my dream. Guess what? I am deciding not to give up my dream. First I need to find out what I would like to write about? Fiction, non-fiction...action, drama, comedy, romance, science-fiction. There are so many options that just figuring out what I would be best at is going to be a large task. Also I have to commit to this just like I would commit to any other job. I need to set up an office where I am comfortable and distractions are at a minimum. Each day I need to spend a certain amount of time working. Currently, I am reading some books about writing. That sounds funny but I think that there is something to be said for those who have experience and mentoring. My access to other writers is simply that of reading books and seeing what is out there already. Coming up with something original is going to be another difficult task. That is where I am calling upon my creativity for sparks that hopefully will turn into full blown Bon fires.

Death of a Super Star

First of all, it has been way too long since I have blogged and that is just wrong.  I should be putting my thoughts somewhere so they don't clog up my brain.  Just like your digestive tract, your mind should be flushed frequently so that it works properly.  So, dear readers...it is time for a mental detox and today is day one of my mental cleansing.  I will probably offend a few people in this post and then there will be those who agree with me.  Either way, I hope that each of you finds my point to be more important than the way I am approaching it.

Death of a Super Star:  I'm going somewhere with this...probably not where you think.

Saturday a week ago Whitney Houston, pop diva of the 80's and 90's, died in Hollywood the night before the Grammy Awards were to be presented and televised.  To say I was shocked would be a lie - I was not shocked to hear the news and briefly it did sadden me.  Whitney Houston was known to struggle with addiction for many years.  She allegedly drowned in her bathtub, with her entourage and visitors sitting in the next room oblivious to her state until it was too late to revive her.  How did this happen?  We don't know the details yet, no toxicology results have been made public but we do know that there were prescription drugs found in her hotel room.  Her life was lived out on TV and in the news media, the media made sure we knew that she had issues well before her death over a week ago.

In her death she joins the ranks of other great voices or Super Stars that died too soon and similarly dealt with addiction issues including most notably Elvis and Michael Jackson.  Oh, and there are a host of others as well, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison are a few more that come to mind when I think about musicians who were talented and because of their demons and struggles with substance abuse came to a sad demise.  Of course (once again I will point out) toxicology reports have not been made public about her death yet but one can speculate that she may have been under the influence when she passed...I am speculating.

Can you blame any one person for her drug abuse?  I don't think so...being in the business that she was in, drugs were around all the time and readily available. Celebrity rehab is big bucks in Hollywood and why do you think that is? Probably because there are so many "yes" people and doctors who are willing to prescribe to celebrities because they want to be well known and cash in on the popularity of that celebrity.  When someone is locking themselves in their bathroom and smoking crack for days...(as it was rumored that Whitney did) there are people who just look the other way and act like it is no big deal.  Whitney was known for her famous words "Crack is Whack" saying that she was too good to be a crackhead...and just because she denied it doesn't mean it's not true.  Addicts are known liars and you cannot convince me that she was not a crackhead.

So, you can blame her, blame her people, and lot's of people are blaming Bobby Brown but I think to myself...it was allowed to happen.  Where were all of her friends when she was sucking on that crack pipe or mixing medications and alcohol?  Some of them may have just been sitting outside her door and basking in her popularity yet, they did not really care what she was doing in that bathroom until it was too late.  That is the thing about being a celebrity, there are way too many people who are just hanging around for their own selfish purposes.  You can apply this to Elvis and Michael Jackson and their own situations as well.  No one was taking Elvis' meds away from him or telling him to slow down on the mac and cheese and fried chicken.(BTW food kills you just like drugs do).  No one was concerned that Michael Jackson had a personal doctor putting him under so he could sleep or that he was addicted to pain killers because of all the plastic surgery he had had done on himself.  Here's an idea about blame...blame anyone who had a chance to step in and intervene for Whitney but sat around and just watched her kill herself.  You can't tell me nobody knew she was partying on the night she died. I don't buy that.

Now, I am going to talk about the homegoing, which is a funeral for us white folks.  First of all, four hours is a long funeral, I don't care who you are.  I realized there were a lot of celebrity tributes and there were several sermons and speakers.  It was a who's who of the black entertainment community, and those who weren't there including Aretha Franklin are being speculated about why they were absent.  My thoughts on Aretha are that maybe she was one of the smart people who realized how messed up this whole situation was and decided that she wasn't going to be part of it.  Bobby Brown evidently brought too many people and was irritated that he couldn't sit where he wanted nor could all his people sit with him so he left before the funeral started.  I think Bobby wanted recognition and some of the spotlight and maybe he should have not shown up at all.  That is my personal opinion...I have no love for Bobby Brown, especially because he is known as a wife abuser.  He should have stayed wherever he was with his people and went on about his business.  Listening to Tyler Perry speak and Kevin Costner was very moving but personally I do not share the same feelings for this woman as so many obviously do.  I believe faith of believers and what is right and good in the world was misconstrued in so many ways during her homegoing.

This is why I feel like I do...

If Whitney Houston had not been a Super Star, she would have been just another addict who had died and very few people would have described her as an angel in Heaven, nor would they make statements such as the one Kevin Costner did about her being escorted to Heaven by an army of angels.  Now let me be clear, I am not judging Whitney nor where her soul lies in the afterlife.  That is not my job.  If she is in some kind of crazy celebrity choir in Heaven with Elvis and Michael, then when I get to Heaven, and hopefully I will go to Heaven, it will be a big ol' surprise to me...the Lord does work in mysterious ways...right?

Here it is...if she were not so famous, she would not have been so well spoken of by so many famous people.  In my opinion, these famous people who were claiming her soul is with God or in Heaven were themselves judging which is not their job.  Only one person knows where Whitney is and that is Whitney...and God who we have the hope that he is full of grace and mercy has the answer to that as well.  I know I hope the grace and mercy part covers me just as it would cover anyone no matter who they are, because nobody is perfect and we all have problems...famous people have famous problems...which is part of the point I am trying to make.

So, am I the only one who is tired of watching all of the news coverage for this one famous person?   There is tragedy that happens every day in many people's lives that does not get media coverage but should.  We have become focused on the wrong things.  Super Stars are big news...but the war dead get little honor, and while I cannot judge even the war dead on where they will spend eternity, I am more comfortable hearing someone say that angels speed them away to be with God...because they died doing a job that whether you agree with it or not, is way more important than singing songs, winning awards, and being famous.  I'm done with this.  Tired of hearing these anthems from my youth played over and over honoring a woman that without her voice and her Super Star status would have been just another dead drug addict and sadly no one would care.

My feelings about this will probably rub some people the wrong way, but I did not write this as a tribute to the life of Whitney Houston.  I wrote this because I think it is sad that she died and I feel that in the end, all there was to love about her was the songs that she sang.  Not knowing her personally...I am not anyone other that someone who listened to her music as a child and later as a young adult. I will not miss Whitney, because I am not her family.  By the way someone needs to help her poor daughter get a hold of herself or she will fall into her own downward spiral, if she is not already there.  No, Whitney Houston is no longer a Super Star...she is a Star whose light has gone out.  She has truly died...and I am hoping that the media will soon let her die...because there are more important things going on in this world...and as hurtful and unfeeling as that sounds, if we don't wake up...we might all be finding ourselves in a bad place sooner more than later.

Wake up America...don't let this death of one person be all we focus on...there is a war going on...and there is a major world threat that most people aren't paying attention to over our dependence on foreign oil. We might be paying $5 a gallon of gas by the end of the summer.  Our country could economically collapse if that happens. We are allowing the wrong people to lead us in my own opinion but they are not the only one's to blame.  Think of the USA as our Super Star (Super Stars and Stripes if you will) and what is happening is that she is dying (being killed if you want me to be blunt) and everyone is sitting around and letting her die.  When she is gone - it will be too late to revive us at least not to the great country we once were, yes I did go there I compared the death of a Super Star to the impending death of our country.  As an American I am not comfortable with just sitting around blaming everyone else and not crying out for change...or an intervention of some kind. Let's get off the crack people...the dependency on foreign oil is our country's crack.  And just like a crack head, people are going to pay whatever the government tells us we gotta pay??????? Does anyone hear what I am cooking?  This is the USA,  this is the USA on foreign oil dependency (picture the egg frying in the frying pan for those of you old enough to remember the war on drugs commercials). Any questions?